1. Technical Field
Embodiments generally relate to electronic circuits and, more specifically, to integrated circuits housed in a package having connection tabs adapted to transfer contacts to other components or other circuits of an electronic device.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Many electronic circuits, be they monolithic circuits, or digital or analog integrated circuits, are assembled in packages to then be assembled with other circuits or components on an electronic board, for example, a printed circuit.
The packages are generally made of resin or other insulating materials and comprise conductive contacting elements to transfer connections internal to the package to the outside, to establish connections with the other electronic board circuits.
The connection transfer elements may be conductive contact transfer tabs laterally coming out of the package, conductive bumps at the lower surface of the package to be transferred to corresponding conductive pads of the electronic board, etc.
As a result of the miniaturization of integrated circuits, the bulk of an electronic circuit is now due more to the package bulk than to the bulk associated with the electronic functions performed by the integrated circuit. This results in a loss of space in packages having a size, among others, conditioned by the elements of connection to the outside and the intervals to be left between these elements to provide an insulation between the different external connections.
It has already been provided to house, in a same package, several integrated circuits, or a circuit performing several functions, by selecting the function to be used by means of a dedicated external terminal. The circuit connection terminals (tabs or bumps) can then be configured to be assigned to one or the other function. Such a solution requires an additional terminal, which generates an increase of the package size due to its simple presence.